


The Good Buried Inside

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: Uncertain Point of View [19]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Better Explanation For How Padmé Died, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Child Luke Skywalker, F/M, Force Ghost Padmé Amidala, Gen, Happy Ending, Memory Loss, Mostly The Author Dealing With Her Feelings About The End of Episode III, POV Luke Skywalker, POV Second Person, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Skywalker Family Feels, That Damn Japor Snippet Having Actual Plot Relevance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 18:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18762340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: Your name is Luke Skywalker.You don't know the name of the woman who no one else can see or hear, but she has always been there, teaching you, encouraging you, and loving you. She doesn't know her name either.You ask her if you can call her Mother, and that's when she starts to remember...





	The Good Buried Inside

**** Your name is Luke Skywalker.

You are not alone. You have never been alone.

Sure, you have your aunt and you have your uncle, and neither of them lets you out of their sight for more than a few hours at a time even though you’re almost ten years old, but that isn’t why you are never alone.

You are never alone because, ever since the day that you rummaged through a box that your uncle hadn’t hidden as well as he thought, the day that you don’t remember because it was so long ago,  _ she _ has been there with you. 

You don’t know her name. Neither does she: she says that she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember a lot of things but she knows who you are and she knows that she loves you. 

When you were young, too young to know that it was strange that no one else could see her, she would sing to you—half-remembered snatches of melody, but not much in the way of words—and then you would sing the same notes to your aunt and uncle, and they would look at you with a very strange expression on their faces. Then your aunt would ask your uncle if he taught it to you, and your uncle would ask her the same thing, and then they would ask you where you heard those songs. When you told them who sang them to you, your aunt grew very quiet and your uncle told you that you were imagining things. 

You’re pretty sure that she isn’t imaginary, though, because you would have invented someone closer to your own age. She looks about as old as your aunt and uncle, with kind brown eyes and dark hair that is always pinned up a little differently every time you see her, and when she smiles at you that’s when you’re certain that she loves you. 

She doesn’t always smile: sometimes she looks sad, but when you ask her why, she says that she can’t remember. Sometimes you’re frustrated by all the things that she can’t remember, and you can tell that she’s frustrated too. 

But, happy or sad, remembering or not, she is always there, wearing a necklace with the same japor carving that you have on a cord around your neck.

* * *

She may not know much about herself, but she knows a lot of other things. 

When your uncle tells you yet again that you’re imagining things, she teaches you how to keep secrets and how to lie if he asks you a question that you don’t want to answer. 

When your aunt punishes you by sending you to your room, she teaches you how to sneak out and how to hide so that your aunt never even knows you were gone.

When the kids at school call you “Wormy” and push you down onto the hard-packed sand, she teaches you how to smile and how to win them over to your side with a few charming words. 

When the kids at school start pushing other kids to the ground, she teaches you when to step in and stop them, and how to look them in the eyes until they’re too ashamed to look back at you.

When some of the bigger kids keep doing it, she teaches you how to look like easy prey and how to lure them in until they’re close enough to punch in the nose.

She teaches you how to convince people of your point of view, how to talk like an Anchorhead kid one minute and a Core Worlder the next, how to come up with solutions that help as many people as possible, and how to never  _ ever _ back down.

Even when the bigger kids punch back and you feel grains of sand inside your cuts.

Even when the men with the mean faces yell terrible things at your aunt when you go to Tosche Station.

Even when your teachers tell you to just do what you’re told even though you know they’re wrong.

Even when you’ve been knocked down again and again and again… she is there, telling you to get back up and fight. 

* * *

It takes you until you are almost ten years old to realize that she might be your mother.

When you ask her this, she says that she doesn’t remember, but she also says that she hopes it’s true. You ask if you can call her Mother and she says yes. 

You know that your grandmother was Shmi Skywalker and that she married your uncle’s father, but that’s all anyone ever tells you.

You’ve asked your aunt and uncle about your mother but they say that they never met her. They say that they never met your father either. They tell you to stop asking.

But because Mother also taught you how to hear what people aren’t saying, you know that your aunt and uncle are lying. 

The next time you and Mother go to visit your grandmother’s grave, you ask her if she ever met Shmi. Usually, when she can’t remember something she tells you right away, but this time she is quiet for awhile and then says that she isn’t sure. 

It’s as though by giving her a name, or something close to a name, she is starting to change. She might even begin to remember things, you think, but you don’t know what else you can do to help.

* * *

A few weeks later, you are following your aunt around Anchorhead, with your mother at your side like always, when you walk past someone wearing a hooded cloak. 

You don’t think much of it, because Anchorhead is full of people wearing dusty brown cloaks like that, but Mother suddenly cries out and tells you that you have to go back and talk to him. You ask her who ‘he’ is and she says that she doesn’t remember, but then she adds that she  _ does  _ remember that she knows him.

You slip away from your aunt, just like your mother taught you, and try to figure out who it was that you saw. It’s more difficult than you expected since it now seems like the entire street is full of people in those cloaks, but at last you get a look at someone and your mother yells “Him!”

He is older than she is, with mostly grey hair and a beard, and he looks very surprised to see you when you march up to him. 

You ask him if he knew your mother and, without saying a word in reply, the man gets a look of terror on his face and runs away.

You want to chase after him, but your aunt finally noticed that you were gone and now there is hell to pay.

* * *

After that, you look for him every time you are in Anchorhead, but he isn’t there. 

At Mother’s suggestion, you start casually asking some of your schoolmates if anyone has heard of someone who looks like him. You finally get a name: Ben Kenobi.

Your mother knows that name and suddenly it’s as if there is a fire inside of her. She  _ knows _ him, she knows who he is, and she says that if you could find a way to talk to him, he could tell you who  _ she _ is. He is the key to all of this, Mother says. You ask her question after question and you are both frustrated by her lack of useful answers.

You’re not sure what to feel about this version of her: this woman who suddenly won’t stop talking and keeps swinging back and forth between joy and impatience. You want to find this Ben Kenobi, partly because you want answers, but also because you’re starting to get really worried about your mother and what might happen to her if she keeps going like this.

* * *

Rather than barge up to him when you finally see him in Anchorhead again, you follow him until you can corner him alone.

It isn’t hard: he doesn’t talk to anyone and tries to keep out of sight. But when he realizes that it’s you, sneaking up behind him in the narrow alley between two cantinas, he tries to run off again and you finally lose your temper and yell at Ben Kenobi that he really needs to do  _ something _ to help you because your mother won’t stop talking and it’s driving you crazy.

His eyes move from your face to the japor snippet around your neck and then back to your face again. 

“What is she saying?” he asks cautiously. He sounds like he’s from the Core, and you privately wonder what he’s doing out here on Tatooine.

“That she knows you,” you say, “and that if I talk to you, you could tell us about her because she doesn’t remember.” That’s not all she’s saying, because right now she keeps repeating that she gave him something, and you end up shushing her because it almost seems like Ben can’t get a word in edgewise, even though he obviously can't hear her like you can. He looks like he has a  _ lot _ of questions, but it’s like he doesn’t know which one to ask first. 

You see your mother point at the japor carving around her neck and give you a look that obviously means you’re supposed to do something, so you hold up your own necklace and ask Ben if he knows what it is. 

Very slowly, Ben reaches out and touches it, at which point he actually yelps in surprise and then looks  _ directly at your mother. _

He can see her. 

What follows is quite a lot of yelling.

* * *

Eventually, you learn what happened:

A long time ago, a boy named Anakin met a girl named Padmé and thought that she was an angel. Until the day he left Tatooine with her, he had never given anything to anyone, because before that day he didn’t have anything of his own to give. That day, his first day of freedom, he gave her the very first thing he ever owned: a small piece of carved japor ivory wood and a jerba leather cord. 

She kept it for a very long time: through peacetime and wartime, through danger and distance, until the day they both died.

Except that, from a certain point of view, neither of them died that day.

(Ben didn’t want to tell you this part, but your mother, whose name you now know is Padmé, demanded that he tell you anyway. “No more secrets,” she said.)

In one part of the galaxy, a man named Anakin was burning, inside and out. In another part of the galaxy, a woman named Padmé was giving birth. Anakin had destroyed so many things in the days leading up to this final day, but there was somehow still one thing that remained: a connection, as thin as a jerba leather cord, that had survived through peacetime and wartime and danger and distance. 

(The connection was invisible, but you know very well that some things are still real even if they cannot be seen.)

Someone else could see that connection, though, and even though this person never did discover the secret to creating life, he knew enough to realize that this connection could be used. In order to save one, the other had to die.

(And he obviously had a preference.)

Padmé felt herself being pulled apart as a far-away Sith Lord drained her life force to revive his broken apprentice. She tried to hang on, but there was so little to hang onto. In a place without sight or thought or memory, she reached with fingers outstretched to find something, anything—and caught hold of a small piece of wood. There wasn’t much of it, but at that point there wasn’t much of her either.

The part of her with memories and speech and sight was dying, gasping out her final words while using the last of her strength to press a necklace into the hand of the only person to survive the story that started all those years ago. 

(Ben’s voice nearly crumbles as he says “I almost buried it with you.”)

Because the part of Padmé that had speech and memory and sight didn’t understand why she had to pass along the necklace, Ben Kenobi didn’t know what it meant either. He gave the necklace to your aunt and uncle, and it might have sat in a box forever if an impulse that you were too young to understand hadn’t made you pull it out and put it around your neck.

And that is why you have never been alone.

* * *

Time passes, and you learn other things too.

Ben teaches you about the Force and how it connects the whole galaxy together. In your mind, you see it as a web of jerba cord, tying everything to every other thing until the spaces in between are all full up.

Mother teaches you about politics: how a single person can influence billions of people, and how billions of people can influence a single person. 

Ben teaches you about the powers that you inherited from your father: how looking within yourself is the first step to understanding the universe, and how looking out at the universe is the first step to understanding yourself. 

Mother teaches you about disguises and subterfuge: how to look one way and act another, how to find the weak points in both arguments and security systems, and how to conceal a small blaster in almost any outfit.

Ben teaches you how to use a lightsaber, how to pilot anything from a speeder bike to a starfighter, and how to use the Force to be faster and more agile than you would have thought possible in a human being.

Mother teaches you to see what people are hiding and Ben teaches you how not to be seen.

Ben teaches you how to command an army and Mother teaches you how to negotiate a treaty that would make such an army unnecessary.

And throughout all of these lessons, they argue with one another about the Rebellion.

She wants you both to join. He doesn’t.

Ben says that he is supposed to watch over you and teach you how to be a Jedi, and Mother says that if he keeps waiting around on Tatooine there isn’t going to be much of a galaxy left for you to protect by the time you become one. He says that you are too young to be put in danger like that, and Mother says that you’re almost sixteen and that she was ruling an entire planet when she was that age.  He says that the Empire would stop at nothing to hunt you down if they learned your name, and Mother rolls her eyes and points out that pseudonyms aren't hard to invent.

But the argument always comes back to the same thing every time: your father is still out there and he is still very dangerous.

Neither of them asks you for your opinion. You finally demand to know what the point is of them teaching you so many things if you’re just going to sit here and do nothing.

Ben realizes that he is outnumbered.

* * *

Your mother had said “no more secrets” and so you both thought that Ben had told you everything.

He hadn’t. 

You are with the Rebellion for a little over six months when you meet Bail Organa for the first time. 

You can tell that he knows your name isn’t really Luke Lars and, because of what you have been taught, you can tell that he is hiding a lot of other things because he seems to be trying to not say anything at all to you. With your mother’s help, because she knew him once, you figure out the thing that he is trying very hard not to mention in your hearing:

He has a daughter. 

Her name is Leia.

Ben had reminded your mother of many things, but he didn’t remind her of everything. He claims that it was because if she knew about Leia, she would stop at nothing to reunite with her daughter and it would put both Leia and you in danger of being found by the Empire. 

You are pretty sure that the only reason why Ben is still breathing is because your mother isn’t corporeal and therefore can’t strangle him or hit him with something heavy. 

Though that doesn’t keep her from very strongly suggesting that you do it on her behalf.

You can’t say that you’re not tempted.

* * *

You practically throw your japor necklace at Bail Organa and wait for him to see your mother. 

It doesn’t work. To him, it’s just a piece of wood on a string.

You tell him that you know you have a sister. You are frustrated, he is frustrated, Mother is  _ extremely _ frustrated, and you’re getting sick of having to tell Bail everything she is saying all the time. 

For once, being alone sounds like it would be a nice change.

* * *

To your utter relief, Leia can see her when you hand her the necklace.

There is a lot to tell your sister: about the Force, about your parents, about what this means for the Rebellion and the galaxy. Her shock is surprisingly short-lived, though: it turns out that she is really difficult to rattle. Both of you have some pretty pointed questions for Bail and Ben about why only one of you got to be royalty while the other one had to go live on a farm.

(Speaking of the farm, your aunt and uncle were even more upset when you joined the Rebellion than they were when you started meeting Ben regularly for lessons, but at least they answer the comms when you call them now.)

Bail isn’t thrilled with the idea of Leia getting anywhere near the Rebellion, but it's too late now.

Your mother gets to work teaching Leia all the things she taught you, and for the first time in years she isn't with you. You are torn between jealousy and relief, and when you admit this to Bail he tells you that this happens to most teenagers, even ones whose parents  _ aren't _ ghosts trapped in a piece of wood.

Leia is so much like you and also so much not like you. You keep wanting to find time to talk to her alone, but your mother is always around at least one of you, so you and your sister mostly talk to one another through pointed sighs and exasperated eye-rolling.

But in between fighting against the Empire and learning everything that people think you need to know in order to save the galaxy, there are still moments of calm.

One night, when you and Ben return from yet another unlikely-but-successful mission, your mother looks around at the two of you and Leia, all of you out of danger for another few hours, and she almost seems peaceful.

“Everyone is finally here,” she says with a contented sigh, but then stops and looks very sad.

Everyone isn’t here.

“He’s gone,” she murmurs. “He's lost forever.”

You never knew Anakin but you can still feel your mother’s heartbreak.

Not just her’s—you can feel Ben’s heartbreak too as he works up the courage to speak.

“One last secret,” he says quietly. He looks at your mother. “You don’t remember your last words, do you?”

Your mother shakes her head, unsure of whether what she is feeling is anger or hope.

“You said… you told me that you knew there was still good in him.”

Mother goes still as sandstone. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demands.

You can still sense Ben’s pain through the Force, even stronger than it was before, as he whispers almost too softly for you to hear: “Because if that were true, it would mean that I should have saved him on Mustafar… and I didn’t.”

You see Leia tap her collarbone to remind you about the japor carving around your neck and she gives you a look that obviously means you’re supposed to do something.

You aren't sitting close enough to exchange words but the two of you have gotten very good at communicating without them.

“It's not too late,” Leia says, still looking at you.

Mother and Ben pull themselves out of their private agonies. “What do you mean?” Mother asks.

* * *

It isn’t going to be easy to distract someone like Darth Vader, but fortunately you came prepared with a  _ lot  _ of distractions:

First, a Rebel base that had been hidden until now… mostly because it didn’t exist until you manufactured it a few weeks ago.

Next, rumors of a set of stolen plans for the TIE Defender project on Lothal. You wish that you  _ did _ have those plans, of course, but Vader doesn’t know that you don’t.

Then, a young princess trying to deliver said plans to the Rebellion. Leia  _ is _ here, and says she wishes that you really had those plans too.

And the most distracting of all: General Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Last Jedi… well, the last Jedi that Vader knows about, at least.

Vader is so focused on the idea of a final epic confrontation with his former Master that he doesn’t see you at all. Maybe he would have if you hadn’t been taught so much over the years, but you know how to hide and you know how to set a trap and, most importantly in this case, you know how to use the Force to levitate a small cord of jerba leather into position right above Vader’s helmet. 

You let it drop right before he ignites his lightsaber. 

The necklace settles around Vader’s collar, returning to its creator for the first time in almost thirty years, awakening a connection that he thought he had burned away.

What follows is a very long silence, broken only by Ben backing out of the room while saying “I’ll leave you two alone, then.”

You have no idea what your parents are saying to one another as you and the rest of the Rebels make your way to your ships to evacuate, but for the time being you are content to let that stay a secret.

* * *

Things don't change as fast as you want them to, but they do change.

One day, Darth Vader simply vanishes. A short time later, so does the Emperor.

You don't know where the latter ended up, but you do know where to find the former. 

On a windy day like this one, the sound of the waves crashing on the lake shore is almost loud enough to cover the sound of his machine-assisted breathing. They sit together, watching the light of Naboo's single sun on the water, the air full of the odor of flowers that neither of them can smell.

He doesn't have much life left himself but what he has he is happy to share with her. It is half penitence and half gratitude. They can't touch but they also can't be parted.

He doesn't say much to you or Leia, other than thanks and apologies (he has neither of those for Ben), but you both visit when you can, and your father eventually lets himself think about the present instead of just the past.

As for you and your sister, you’re both thinking about the future. There is a whole galaxy out there and it’s never going to run out of work for you to do.

Your mother taught you how to fight but she also taught you how to build and repair, which is a form of fighting too. 

Ben is fighting his own fight by making sure that he will never be the last Jedi, armed with a lightsaber and a lifetime of memories and the revelation that there might be good buried in all sorts of places.

One day, you go back to Tatooine for a visit. A couple of questions and a few trades later, you have what you are looking for, though you wait until you’re back on your ship to start carving the first piece of japor wood. By the time you reach Coruscant, you have two identical necklaces, and when you put one of them in Leia’s hands she doesn’t have to ask what it means.

**Author's Note:**

> The entire fic is a response to the extreme indignation I always feel when I watch that scene at the end of _Revenge of the Sith_ where Yoda and Obi-Wan decide to bury the damn necklace with Padmé and ignore literally everything she said.
> 
>  
> 
> Music: Guided By Voices, "Hold On Hope"


End file.
